Competitions

by Sharon Green

  The man swallowed hard, his dark eyes showing a good deal of fear. When Rion had first used the power, the man had tried to counter Rion’s efforts. He seemed to be a rather strong Middle talent, but next to Rion he might as well have been a talentless Guild member. Mother’s agent must have sent this man in particular with the message, thinking he would be able to defend himself. It hadn’t worked out that way, and the man was quick to admit it.

  “Wh-what I expect to do is play it smart,” the man stuttered in his haste to supply the right answer. “The others and I will find something else to do, and then you won’t be bothered again.”

  “Wrong,” Rion told him, using the block of air to push him another step closer. “What you will do is not mention any of this part of the conversation, except to the others who watch along with you. What you will tell them is that they’ll now be earning easy silver, as they’re to take their posts and then read or sleep. If I appear I am not to be followed, and you may make up any details for your reports that you like. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Very,” the man agreed with a gulp, but Rion could see the instant calculation in his eyes and decided against letting it pass.

  “Don’t think you can find a way around my orders,” he said, suddenly but briefly blocking the air the man was currently breathing. “I mean to hold you responsible for the actions of all the rest of your friends, and if one or more of them follow me they won’t be the only ones to experience my displeasure. Now what do you say?”

  “Yes, all right, you’ve made your point,” the man gasped out, finally able to breathe again. “I’ll keep it quiet, and make sure the others do the same. In the name of the Unknown Aspect, how did you get so damned strong?”

  “Practice,” Rion answered dryly, then stepped back and closed the door in the man’s face. Whether or not his orders would be followed was still up for debate, but at least he’d made some effort to increase his freedom. If it happened to work, all fine and good; if it didn’t, he’d have to try something else.

  But in the meanwhile, he had another question to ruin his sleep: would Naran eventually return to that house and end up being found? He hoped not, or he would probably lose his head and do something horrible. He wished he knew where she was, and why she’d left like that. Where … and why, why, why…?

  * * *

  Lady Eltrina Razas settled back in her seat as her carriage pulled away from the residence, which finally let her show the laughter she’d been holding in. Even the densest, most trusting member of all the groups would finally see the truth today, and none of the people she’d just left fit into that category. They were all smart enough to have grown suspicious about what the testing authority was doing some time ago, and this latest interview would have clinched matters for them. They might not have all the answers, but by now they ought to know that they’d be formed into a challenging Blending—and should also have decided to ruin things for the authority by seriously trying to win the Throne.

  Eltrina laughed aloud in delight at such colossal naïveté. She hadn’t really believed that all the peasants would react that way, but Ollon Kapmar had been absolutely right. He spoke from the experience of having gone through a previous twenty-fifth year, of course, so Eltrina wasn’t as impressed as she’d pretended to be when he’d told her. But the idea of letting them think they’d learned things they weren’t supposed to know was marvelous, no matter who had originally thought of it. It made the poor little things so much easier to manage…

  Another laugh escaped her, this time one of anticipation. She couldn’t wait until all those naive little fools learned the real truth, only far too late for it to do them any good. And by then she would have all the power she needed to choose among the males for a toy or two, to keep her entertained for a while. But not too long a while. Lord Kagrin’s father would begrudge her every minute she kept them, and Lord General Trepor Axtin wasn’t a man to trifle with. He might refrain from criticizing her openly, but only if she were firmly seated in Ollon’s place.

  Sudden annoyance made Eltrina shift in her seat as it chased away her amusement. All her planning had gone extremely well, and she’d been poised on the brink of arranging Ollon’s sadly fatal accident when circumstances had turned briefly against her. Ollon’s sister had been brutally murdered, and Ollon’s rage over the loss had caused the man to change his habitual actions. He had been spending most of his time haunting the investigators, demanding that they find the one responsible for killing his sister. Eltrina had known Elfini, of course, and personally couldn’t see what the fuss was about. It wasn’t as if someone useful had been killed…

  But Ollon raged on and on about the loss of his precious sister, leading Eltrina to suspect that there had been more between them than a sibling relationship. That part of it didn’t matter in the least, but the fact that Eltrina was no longer able to know when Ollon would be in a particular place did. He hadn’t even slept with her since the murder, and how was she supposed to arrange his accident when she never knew where he would be?

  Eltrina took a deep breath to calm herself, hoping the rumor she’d heard this morning was true. Just before she left the house, her husband had mentioned that someone had been put under arrest for the murder. His informant had said it was one of their own, a member of the nobility, but no one seemed willing to believe that. A peasant, yes, but a member of the nobility? That was too ridiculous to consider.

  But it really didn’t matter who had been arrested, if the action served to return Ollon to his usual habits. She’d been the one doing all the work for the past few days, and that was definitely not part of her plans. Ollon was supposed to do the work before he died, not spend all his time looking for vengeance. If he wasn’t careful, the Advisors would replace him before she had the chance to arrange his accident.

  Time was growing very short, but Eltrina refused to abandon her ambitions. If Ollon wasn’t there to oversee the final arrangements for the competitions, then Eltrina would just have to coax someone else into doing it and then take the credit for herself. She’d already had to pick a replacement for the entrant who had lost his mind during the first competition, and she hadn’t enjoyed having to interrupt her own private schedule to do it. And now she had to drag herself to that tiresome meeting this afternoon in Ollon’s place.

  Thoughts of that meeting made her very tired, but the people involved were simply too important to ignore. She would be expected to report on the results of the measurements taken from the peasants, and would confidently tell them the truth: none of them was too strong to be easily handled, so the right people had nothing to worry about. The second part of it, though, concerning that idiotic worry about the Prophecies… Ollon appeared to be just as concerned as their superiors, but she certainly wasn’t that foolish.

  So she would have to pretend to be concerned, no matter how ridiculous the pretense made her feel. Yes, we’ve had all the applicants closely watched, but no, not a single sign was seen to manifest. Big surprise, as though they’d have to look hard to see the signs the Prophecies spoke of. They were all fools, and maybe she would do well to consider taking one of their positions once she had Ollon’s.

  Well, that was for the future. Eltrina smiled again, pleased that she’d stuck to her determination despite all those ridiculous little snags. It meant she was destined for greatness, just as she’d always known…

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Homin was actually the first to get to the new residence. When the servants who came out for his baggage told him that, it improved his mood to a small extent. And his mood needed improving, there was no doubt about that. Annoyance had been an unfamiliar emotion to him, but the past few days had begun to teach him a number of unfamiliar things.

  It took only a few moments to follow the servants to his assigned quarters, where he left his coat and new hat. He’d been told that tea was ready before he’d come upstairs, so he went back down to the sitting room to have a cup. He’d only just gotten sugar a
dded when he heard someone else’s arrival, and turned in time to see Delin Moord enter.

  “Homin, dear fellow, what an incredible surprise!” Delin exclaimed, obviously in a happily expansive mood himself. “You’re actually the first of us to arrive, something I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

  “There are any number of things not to be believed around here,” Homin replied with a grimace. “My apartment has only two rooms, Delin, and I seriously doubt if there are enough servants to see to our needs. Why couldn’t they have left us where we were?”

  “You can’t join people into a Blending when they’re scattered all over the landscape,” Delin replied, now eyeing him curiously. “What’s come over you, Homin? I scarcely recognize you from just a few short days ago.”

  “I’m no different than I was,” Homin protested, knowing he spoke the truth. “It’s simply that I’ve only just begun to … get things moving smoothly at home, and now they’re forcing me to come here. I intend to suggest that we all move to my place, where we’ll certainly be a good deal more comfortable.”

  “Your place,” Delin echoed, still looking at him strangely. “You sound as though you’ve forgotten that it’s your father’s house, not yours, and I believe that’s the key to your odd behavior. This is the first time you’ve been on your own, isn’t it? There’s no one at—‘your place’—to tell you what to do, and on the contrary the servants have been taking your orders. Independence is a heady wine, isn’t it, Homin?”

  “Yes, it certainly is,” Homin granted him grudgingly after gulping a swallow of tea. He had forgotten somehow that the house was Father’s rather than his, and that Father could conceivably return at any time. Homin found that he disliked that idea intensely, especially since Father was almost certain to blame all his troubles on him. As though he were the one who had married that Elfini…

  “Well, it so happens I’m glad you’ve had a taste of that particular wine,” Delin said, looking at him with the sort of approval Homin had never seen before. “You seemed to be the only one of us who didn’t fully appreciate what our aim was, but now it’s clear that you do. Our success will mean that you never have to go back to someone else’s house, Homin. What you find around you will be yours, and you’ll have guaranteed your independence for the rest of your life.”

  “How odd, Delin,” Homin commented in surprise. “You’re absolutely right, and I didn’t realize that. Or wasn’t able to appreciate it, just as you said. Now that I can, you can be certain of my full support and maximum effort.”

  “I’m delighted to hear that, old fellow,” Delin said with a smile, then turned to see who was arriving now. It turned out to be Bron, who strode into the sitting room with a scowl on his face.

  “My driver almost couldn’t find this place,” he announced as he headed for the tea service. “It’s more than a little out of the way, and it’s smaller than I expected. Do they seriously intend for us to live in each other’s laps?”

  “Homin and I were just discussing the fact that one must sometimes put up with minor annoyances for the good of more important aims,” Delin told him smoothly with a wink behind Bron’s back for Homin. “We’ll need you to stress that point with the others, Bron, as they’re certain to require your guidance. Not all of us understand these things as clearly as you do.”

  “That, old man, is why I’m leader of this group,” Bron replied comfortably, turning with teacup in hand and scowl nearly gone. “And of course I’ll explain the matter to the others, so you needn’t worry. How soon will that new Advisory agent be here?”

  “In about an hour,” Delin replied, just as though he knew exactly what Bron meant. “Giving us time to get all settled in, I imagine.”

  “What’s this about a new Advisory agent?” Homin asked, looking back and forth between the two larger men. “Has Lord Rigos been replaced? I never thought we’d see the day we were rid of him.”

  “Homin, where have you been?” Bron asked with that superior sort of amusement Homin detested. “Surely someone has told you that Rigos was arrested for—Good grief.”

  “Yes, discussing the matter with Homin could be somewhat difficult,” Delin said when Bron stopped short in unexplained embarrassment. “What our leader began to say was that Rigos has been arrested for the murder of your stepmother. No one from the investigators or guard came by to tell you?”

  “Possibly they sent word to Father,” Homin suggested, his brows still high with shock. “Rigos killed Elfini? I knew there was bad blood between them, but I never would have expected him to What reason did he give for doing it?”

  “So far he hasn’t even admitted to the crime,” Delin said, speaking to Bron as well. “His father learned of his arrest almost immediately, and has actually been working to get Rigos freed. All he’s accomplished so far is to keep them from questioning our beloved former overseer, and rumor has it that that’s about to come to an end. The Advisors want someone punished for that terrible crime, to be certain that no one loses himself to such an extent again.”

  “For once I agree with them,” Bron said, sounding as though he meant it. “If we don’t press our right to be untouchable in all ways, we could lose the right. A crime like this has to be severely punished, or one of us could conceivably be next.”

  Delin nodded sober agreement, but Homin simply drank his tea. He’d begun to feel extremely grateful to whomever had removed Elfini from his life, and it was odd to think of Rigos as the one. Was it now necessary to forgive the man for the way he’d treated them? Homin decided to try, but wasn’t sure he would succeed.

  The three of them sat down to drink their tea, and Homin was forced to admit that the chairs and couches were more comfortable than the ones in his father’s sitting room. The house itself wasn’t particularly new, but it had obviously been repaired and refurbished with fairly decent items and touches. The smell of fresh whitewash was enough to give one a headache, but that was better than the smell of rot and decay.

  Delin and Bron continued to chat about Rigos for a time, and Homin had the impression that they knew something they weren’t mentioning. After a while the sound of a new arrival came, followed closely by a second arrival. Neither of the newcomers appeared immediately, which presumably meant they’d gone to their apartments first. Another short while passed, and then Selendi and Kambil walked into the room together.

  “That’s one way to avoid being last,” Delin commented with a grin. “Arrive at the same time someone else does, and then neither of you is last.”

  “I would never think to burden a lady in such a way,” Kambil said solemnly, obviously teasing. “The onus of being last will rest squarely on my shoulders, to spare Selendi the ignominy of it all.”

  “Not to mention the fact that he was last,” Selendi put in dryly as she walked to the tea service, apparently not amused. “But as far as being first to leave goes, that will definitely be me. Expecting us to live in this squalor is completely unreasonable.”

  “Not when you consider what we’re here for,” Bron disagreed, just as though he hadn’t said almost the same thing when he’d arrived. “It will only be for a short time, and then we’ll be able to move to much larger quarters.”

  They all chuckled at that, realizing that Bron referred to the Five’s palace. There were six wings on the palace, and only one of them was used for public functions of all sorts. Each of the others belonged to a different member of the Five, and he or she had the final word there. It was said that even the Advisors couldn’t interfere with that prerogative, which sounded to Homin like absolute utopia.

  “If living in a box drives me crazy, how far do you expect the rest of you to get?” Selendi asked, turning with her tea to inspect each of them. “The four of you need me, and you’d better not forget that.”

  “The truth is that we all need each other,” Delin put in smoothly before Bron could lose his temper and snap at the silly girl. “Individually we’re just a group of unimportant
people, but together we’re a force to be reckoned with. So which would you rather be, Selendi? Unimportant or a major force?”

  The answer to that was too obvious to put into words, and Selendi didn’t even try. Instead she sipped at her tea in a way that said she didn’t care to discuss the matter any longer, and Delin acceded to her unvoiced wishes with a smile.

  “So, Kambil, tell us if you’ve had any luck,” he went on smoothly to another subject. “No one seemed to know who would be put in charge of us in Rigos’s place when I asked, so I’ve been hoping that your contacts are better informed.”

  “I found out that the decision wasn’t made until the last moment,” Kambil said, coming over to sit down with the cup he’d filled. “Apparently there were people lined up from wall to wall who had been waiting for a chance like this, and they all descended on the authority together. They finally settled on the son of a man who was owed the largest favor, someone by the name of Hiblit Rahms. I think I’ve heard the name, but I can’t quite put a face to it.”

  “I can, so take my word for the fact that you’re lucky you can’t,” Homin said while everyone else frowned in thought or simply shook their head. “I was forced to attend social functions with Hiblit when we were both boys because his father and mine were working closely together at the time. The best thing I can say about him is that he made me look as handsome and charming as Delin, which should tell you something. I haven’t seen him in years so there’s a good chance he’s changed, but whether for the better or the worse I don’t dare try to guess.”

  “Now I can’t wait to meet him,” Delin said with raised brows, a curious amusement flickering in his eyes. “If he’s really worse than you, Homin, we should have it made.”